Assessing the technical efficiency of grape production in open field cultivation in China

Grape is quite popular in the world and has been grown almost all over the world. China is also one of the largest grape producers, and grape production becomes relatively important for this country. The objective of this paper is to assess the level of technical efficiency of grape production in China and analyze the effects of input elements on profit. Stochastic Frontier approach is adopted to assess the technical efficiency. The results show that the average technical efficiencies of grape production are 0.76 and 0.71 in the South and Bohai Bay Rim area of China, while there are almost no technical efficiency loss in the north central region of Northeast, Loess Plateau and Northwest. Findings indicate that the average output of vineyards in the South and the Bohai Bay Rim area could increase by over 20 if appropriate technologies are adopted. Moreover, the input elasticity index in grape production reveals that material input is still a key factor for grape production of all the regions. Factors related to the vineyard and labour have various degrees of effect on grape production in the five regions.